Dry season water allocation in the Chao Phraya River basin,Thailand

This study examines the recent quantitative characteristics of dry season water allocation in the Chao Phraya River basin, Thailand. Previous studies have focused on inequitable allocation, where the highest priority is given to the domestic water sector and uneven irrigation water variability exists among projects in the delta. This study uses a statistical test and panel data analysis to confirm that the characteristics highlighted in previous studies remain accurate, and it discusses the source of these characteristics in order to understand the issues in water allocation in the Chao Phraya River delta.     

Bilateral Trade Balances of Malaysia with Her 11 Largest Trading Partners: New Evidence from Asymmetry Cointegration

Research on the effects of exchange rate changes on the trade balance is now moving in a new direction, by investigating whether exchange rate changes have symmetric or asymmetric effects. The approach that relies upon separating depreciations from appreciations introduces nonlinearity into the adjustment process and relies upon the nonlinear ARDL approach of Shin et al. [2014. Modelling asymmetric cointegration and dynamic multipliers in a nonlinear ARDL framework, in: R. Sickels and W. Horrace (Eds), Festschrift in Honor of Peter Schmidt: Econometric Methods and Applications, 281–314 (Springer)]. When we applied this new method to the bilateral trade balances of Malaysia with each of her 11 largest partners, we found adjustment asymmetry in all models, short-run impact asymmetry effects and long-run asymmetry effects in the trade balance models between Malaysia and Asian countries.     

Does the Ethical Culture of Organisations Promote Managers’ Occupational Well-Being? Investigating Indirect Links via Ethical Strain

The present study had two major aims: first, to examine the construct validity of the Finnish 58-item Corporate Ethical Virtues scale (CEV; Kaptein in J Org Behav 29:923–947, 2008) and second, to examine whether the associations between managers’ perceptions of ethical organisational culture and their occupational well-being (emotional exhaustion and work engagement) are indirectly linked by ethical strain, i.e. the tension which arises from the difference in the ethical values of the individual and the organisation he or she works for. The sample consisted of 902 managers from different organisations, in middle and upper management levels, aged 25–68 years. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) provided support to the hypothesised eight-factor structure of the CEV scale; i.e. the scale contained the factors of clarity, congruency of supervisors, congruency of senior management, feasibility, supportability, transparency, discussability and sanctionability. In addition, it emerged from the CFAs that the high intercorrelations of these factors can be explained by the second-order factor of ethical culture. The managers’ perceptions of the ethical culture prevailing in their organisations were associated with their occupational well-being both directly (high-work engagement) and indirectly via a low level of ethical strain (low-emotional exhaustion). Thus, the findings indicated that the ethical culture of organisations plays a major role in managers’ occupational well-being.     

Is the Ethical Culture of the Organization Associated with Sickness Absence? A Multilevel Analysis in a Public Sector Organization

The main aim of the present study was to examine whether an ethical organizational culture is associated with sickness absence in a Finnish public sector organization at both the individual (within-level) and work unit (between-level) levels. The underlying assumption was that employees working for organizations that are characterized by a strong ethical organizational culture report less sickness absence. The sample consisted of 2192 employees from one public sector city organization that included 246 different work units. Ethical organizational culture was measured with the Corporate Ethical Virtues scale covering eight sub-dimensions. Sickness absence was inquired by asking the participants to report how many days they had been absent from work because of their own sickness over the past year. Multilevel structural equation modelling showed that, at the individual level, perceptions of a strong ethical organizational culture were associated with less sickness absences after controlling for the background factors. This link was not found at the work-unit level. The findings indicate that an ethical organizational culture plays a significant role in enhancing employee well-being measured as sickness absence. It seems that especially supervisor’s ethical role modeling and possibilities to discuss about ethical issues are important factors in preventing sickness absence in the organizations.     

Multi-reservoir Operation Rules: Multi-swarm PSO-based Optimization Approach

Reservoir operation rules are intended to help an operator so that water releases and storage capacities are in the best interests of the system objectives. In multi-reservoir systems, a large number of feasible operation policies may exist. System engineering and optimization techniques can assist in identifying the most desirable of those feasible operation policies. This paper presents and tests a set of operation rules for a multi-reservoir system, employing a multi-swarm version of particle swarm optimization (MSPSO) in connection with the well-known HEC-ResPRM simulation model in a parameterization–simulation–optimization (parameterization SO) approach. To improve the performance of the standard particle swarm optimization algorithm, this paper incorporates a new strategic mechanism called multi-swarm into the algorithm. Parameters of the rule are estimated by employing a parameterization–simulation–optimization approach, in which a full-scale simulation model evaluates the objective function value for each trial set of parameter values proposed with an efficient version of the particle swarm optimization algorithm. The usefulness of the MSPSO in developing reservoir operation policies is examined by using the existing three-reservoir system of Mica, Libby, and Grand Coulee as part of the Columbia River Basin development. Results of the rule-based reservoir operation are compared with those of HEC-ResPRM. It is shown that the real-time operation of the three reservoir system with the proposed approach may significantly outperform the common implicit stochastic optimization approach.     

Reliability Improved Stochastic Dynamic Programming for Reservoir Operation Optimization

Stochastic Dynamic Programming (SDP) is widely used in reservoir operation problems. Besides its advantages, a few drawbacks have leaded many studies to improve its structure. Handling the infeasible conditions and curse of dimensionality are two major challenges in this method. The main goal of this paper is proposing a new method to avoid infeasible conditions and enhance the solution efficiency with new discretization procedure. For this purpose, an optimization module is incorporated into regular SDP structure, so that, near optimal values of state variables are determined based on the available constraints. The new method (RISDP) employs reliability concept to maximize the reservoir releases to satisfy the downstream demands. Applying the proposed technique improves the reservoir operating policies compared to regular SDP policies with the same assumptions of discretization. Simulation of reservoir operation in a real case study indicates about 15% improvement in objective function value and elimination of infeasible conditions by using RISDP operating policies.     

Panel asymmetric nonlinear unit root test and PPP in Africa

This study revisits purchasing power parity (PPP) theory for 20 African countries using panel asymmetric nonlinear unit root test proposed by Emirmahmutoglu and Omay (2014), through the sequential panel selection method of Chortareas and Kapetanios (2009). While standard panel unit root tests fail to support the PPP, the empirical results from panel asymmetric nonlinear unit root test do support the PPP. However, additional tests reveal that support in all 20 African countries is mostly due to stationarity of the real effective exchange rates of Ghana and Rwanda where the adjustment process towards equilibrium is nonlinear and asymmetric.     

Book review

Built by Japan: Competitive Straegies of the Japanese Construction Industry, Fumio Hasegawa & Shimizu Group FS New York, John Wiley & amp; Sons, 1988, 204 pp., US$25.00.

Technological Change at Work Ian McLouglin & Jon Clark Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1988, 202 pp., Pb £9.00, Hb £25.00.

Enterprising Innovation: An Alternative Approach Veronica Mole & Dave Elliott London, Frances Pinter, 1987, pp. 180.

Flexible Automation: The Global Diffusion of New Technology in the Engineering Industry Charles Edquist Jacobsson Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1988, Hb £35.00.

Expert Systems: Strategic Implications and Applications A. Beerel Chichester, Ellis Horwood Ltd, 1988, 173 pp., £22.50.     

Shannon information in record data

In this article we present results on the Shannon information (SI) contained in upper (lower) record values and associated record times in a sequence of i.i.d continuous variables. We then establish an interesting relationship between the SI content of a random sample of fixed size, and the SI in the data consisting of sequential maxima. We also consider the information contained in the record data from an inverse sampling plan (ISP).